Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says • Hacker News Board

Re: Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says

#171

Post by moistly » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #159

moistly wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we’d be way better off if our manufacturing jobs had stayed on our turf. Yes, things might be more expensive, but we’d also have many more people being paid good wages, we would have reduced GINI inequality issues, we would have better supply-line security, we well might have more workers unions, and we would be more incentivized to reduce our pollution. We would, on average, be richer and more democratic if…

The billionaires of America/EU sold its soul to dictatorships. The rust belt is struggling and the rise of Trump was direct consequence of that.

You need to re-read the stats on Trump voters. They are not all unemployed, uneducated, steel-mill hicks. Not by a looong shot. Your use of stereotypes is a poor strategy.

Re: Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says

#172

Post by franga2000 » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

pyuser583 wrote: post #133

A lot of people are talking about “perverse incentives.” I guess they mean “people being sentenced to death simply so their organs can be harvested.” It would be nice to see some evidence that actually happened. I’m not an admirer of the CCP, but it doesn’t seem trial judges are under any pressure to give death sentences simply to supply organs. China has a very large prison population. Including many “lifers.” Many…

> It doesn’t set a standard of organ donation being a good thing.

The donation part, outside of specific cases like kidneys where they can be donated by a living person, is never a "good thing" if you're looking at where it came from - usually someone dying in a car accident or worse.

And besides, harvesting organs from death row inmates isn't a donation, so it wouldn't really dilute that.

fwiw, I'm not defending taking organs from death row inmates, just replying to this specific concern. Hell, I'd much rather we took organs from any dead body we can - the idea of bodily integrity for a corpse being valued so much we'd rather let people die than violate it is IMO one of our biggest failures as a society.

Re: Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says

#173

Post by jakubadamw » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #119

shakow wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I would qualify any post-Soviet Eastern European country (Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, ...) as a boradly successful. Typically, they are highly corrupted, wealth amass in a tiny sliver of the population, they are hemorrageing their youth and their brains, their political spectrums can be resumed as ‶corrupted right-wing guy sucking on the EU tits″ and ‶corrupted even more far-right guy sucking on Russia/Ch…

> Typically, they are highly corrupted, wealth amass in a tiny sliver of the population, they are hemorrageing their youth and their brains These things have long been super typical of growing middle-income countries on their way to First-World country status. It's misleading to evaluate one by the standards of the other. Also, why no mention of comparative success stories like the Czech Republic?

> These things have long been super typical of growing middle-income countries on their way to First-World country status

Except these things aren't even true, at least not in Poland. Corruption in the classical sense hasn't been a problem here for decades. Nepotism at the upper level of governance (especially in state-owned companies) – true, it's re-emerged. Mixing it up with supposed wealth-amassing, however, makes even less sense because the most egalitarian shift in Poland's economic policy – with empirical observable effects – has so far, for the last 7 years, precisely coincided with the EU-sceptic right-wing populism.

Re: Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says

#174

Post by derefr » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

Gareth321 wrote: post #80

derefr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historians would point toward a pressure toward democratization of states that occurs as the middle class gains more power. Countries like France and Britain didn't suddenly decide on "parliamentary democracy" as a model out of nowhere; they developed a parliament first, when they were still monarchies, and then the parliament suppressed the monarch. The second estate (nobility) of these countries, which previously f…

>Historians would point toward a pressure toward democratization of states that occurs as the middle class gains more power. Historians would be making the classic correlation|causation fallacy. Your French example is apt because China has created a bourgeoisie class which is also the effective monarchy. Historians might say that China has learned from history and ensured that their powerful class cannot be usurped.…

> China has created a bourgeoisie class which is also the effective monarchy

I don’t think you understand the functional meanings of these terms.

People like the modern Russian “oligarchs” or their Chinese equivalents are, in function, nobility, whether they are granted any formal titles or not. You’re a noble in function if 1. you helped the current regime gain power; 2. you can use your ongoing necessity to the regime’s hold on power to coerce the current regime into granting you more semi-sovereign autonomous power; 3. this semi-sovereign autonomous power (the classical example being private armies; the modern example being control of state industries) could be used to topple the regime if enough of it were concentrated.

To be in the borgeoisie, on the other hand, is to be a capitalist — even a magnate — but to not have any individual semi-sovereign autonomous power over the state. Rather, the borgeoisie have such power as a block — they could, together, strangle the economy — but they are by definition not monopolists, and so none of them has any chance of starting or winning a coup on their own.

To put it another way: if Facebook was a private company with a single 100% owner, that owner would still be a member of the borgeoisie of America. However, if Boeing was a private company with a single 100% owner, that owner would be a functional noble — an “oligarch” — title or no.

Re: Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says

#175

Post by Barrin92 » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 6:47 PM UTC

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #135

Barrin92 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well basic math, there's more than a billion of them. How do you think the Communist party displaced the old regime? If the people were to march on Beijing the government would cease to exist within one day, which is of course why it actually tries really hard to keep the people happy. This is of course orthogonal to both the topic at hand and reality. The Chinese are quite content with their government and abuse of…

I'm not familiar with the details of the Communist party, but today's China is autocratic. It's a mistake to take the democratic principle of "people can enact change" and take it to an autocratic government (and outright contradiction when using the adjective "totalitarian"). Okay, the government is also "people" in some way. But the "people" who can currently enact change are the ones who benefit from the current g…

What is important to understand is that both democratic and autocratic governments depend on legitimacy. No the Chinese military or police would not stand any chance against the true popular will of the Chinese, not for a second. That is why the Chinese government has economic growth targets and social programs and so forth. If they could rule like medieval kings they would. All modern, large states are accountable to their people, regardless of whatever form of government rules.

People in power can be responsive to the people or irresponsive in both autocracies and democracies. The Chinese government is extremely responsive to popular opinion, even if its unelected. In that sense it's no different than a big company, which isn't governed by its customers but accountable to them.

The important question isn't, "is it my problem", it's "is it a problem". The Chinese are not children and we're not their parents. Believe it or not they have rational thought in China as well. Using our rational thought means taking seriously the notion that the Chinese do not want our political system, that they by and large if not support at least tolerate their state, and that it's not our problem to solve, because it is not a problem.

Re: Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says

#176

Post by tasuki » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #129

qiskit wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as notable is that china passed laws to stop this practice in 2015 as the article noted. The same year taiwan stopped the practice of taking organs from prisoners. Yet the propaganda is rather one sided. I wonder. I'm against all organ "donations". If it is your time to die, it's your time to die. Also, the biggest issue in organ donation isn't china or taiwan supposedly harvesting a few dozen prisoners' organs.…

You're against organ donations from willing donors that save lives? Are you against other forms of life-saving medicine as well?

The person you're replying to mentioned "poor and desperate people", while you mention the same as "willing donors". Perhaps they're being taken advantage of: they could be in a very bad socio-economic situation through no fault of their own, have no other means to keep themselves fed, or be misled about the potential consequences?

Re: Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says

#177

Post by dirtyid » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 6:58 PM UTC

More Victim's of Communism funded drama, "during executions" is a funny way of saying "after execution" just because they didn't verify brain death. PRC didn't establish formal transplant system until recently - using organs from executed was most viable interim solution. And largely insufficient in terms of supply/demand. It was still hard AF to get execution organ until ban, much easier to pay some rural villagers for spare kidney or buy from illegal harvesters murdering innocents in ASEAN.

Re: Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says

#178

Post by relativ575 » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 7:02 PM UTC

dudus wrote: post #166

moistly wrote: post #28

The biggest mistake western democracies have made is to trade with dictatorships. Enriching them has not encouraged them to become progressive, it has only made them more powerful. We have sown the seeds of our own destruction through our complicity.

Right, they should follow the nice democracies like the US which gives a death row convict the option to choose between firing squad and electrocution [1]. I'd take "Put me under and harvest all my organs" before "firing squad or electrocution" any day, but that's just me. Unfortunately for Richard Bernard Moore he doesn't live in an evil dictatorship. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south-carolina-execute-.…

Even China official admitted that the practice is unethical, maybe you are too eager to shill for them?

> China plans to implement a new national donation system which will allow the government to phase out next year the practice of removing organs from executed prisoners to be used in transplant operations.

China’s health ministry said yesterday that a new national organ donation system is being developed after officials said using organs from death-row prisoners was neither ethical nor sustainable. [0]

[0] - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2012/11/2/china-to-cut-jail-o...

Re: Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says

#179

Post by moistly » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

dudus wrote: post #166

moistly wrote: post #28

The biggest mistake western democracies have made is to trade with dictatorships. Enriching them has not encouraged them to become progressive, it has only made them more powerful. We have sown the seeds of our own destruction through our complicity.

Right, they should follow the nice democracies like the US which gives a death row convict the option to choose between firing squad and electrocution [1]. I'd take "Put me under and harvest all my organs" before "firing squad or electrocution" any day, but that's just me. Unfortunately for Richard Bernard Moore he doesn't live in an evil dictatorship. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south-carolina-execute-.…

No post body was provided.

Re: Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says

#180

Post by rascul » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 7:10 PM UTC

moistly wrote: post #28

The biggest mistake western democracies have made is to trade with dictatorships. Enriching them has not encouraged them to become progressive, it has only made them more powerful. We have sown the seeds of our own destruction through our complicity.

> The biggest mistake western democracies have made is to trade with dictatorships

Even benevolent dictatorships?